The 5 Biggest Backfires in the History of Disaster Relief

The nice thing about natural disasters is that you always know who to blame them on: your god, your god's greatest mortal enemy or a kraken. Unfortunately, we don't have the same luxury when it comes to catastrophes brought on by man -- especially when all of man's bright ideas for fixing them just keep making them worse.

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#5. Fixing an Oil Spill With Napalm

It's probably hard to believe now, but BP hasn't always enjoyed the stellar reputation it does today. Back in 1967, British Petroleum chartered an oil tanker named the Torrey Canyon to deliver a mess of crude oil to a refinery in Wales. This wasn't just any run-of-the mill tanker; it was the world's first supertanker, capable of hauling 120,000 tons of oil at a time. And unfortunately, its huge capacity for oil-carrying was just about all that was "super" about the Torrey Canyon, because if that tanker had had the power of flight, it would be in a totally different article right now.

"6 Harbingers of the Apocalypse and FLEE -- FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES."

So you can probably see where this is heading.

The Torrey Canyon's problems started with Capt. Pastrengo Rugiati, who, like most Italian oiler tanker captains, had a few bad habits. One was that he liked shortcuts, presumably so he could get home to perpetuate some Italian stereotypes, like eating spaghetti and extorting bribes. Another was that he kept forgetting whether his ship was set to "automatic" or "manual," which is semi-important when you need to make some tricky maneuvers in a hugeass supertanker. And finally, he appointed the ship's cook as his helmsman.

Getty"The captain is on the starboard side, and I'm drunk on the port."

Shockingly, all of this coagulated into a blitzkrieg of stupid that landed the Torrey Canyon smack dab in the middle of the Seven Stones, a ridiculously famous reef off the coast of Cornwall.

By nightfall, it was crystal clear that the Torrey Canyon was going down, which was probably why all 31 million gallons of oil on board got sentient and decided to abandon ship. Within 12 hours of the spill, the British navy decided the best option was to unleash an assault of "detergents" on the six-mile slick, since detergents had worked all right on cleaning up minor coastal spills in the past. And what do you know, British Petroleum manufactured those exact detergents! Talk about lucky!

GettyOh, BP. You guys have the solution to everything!

Except these "detergents" weren't detergents at all -- they were cleaning solvents meant to be used on engine rooms, not oceans. One reporter said that using the detergents to mop up oil was "like trying to pick up quicksilver with boxing gloves." The chemicals not only made it harder to capture the oil but also made it easier for marine animals to capture it. In their mouths. So now birds and fish weren't ingesting just oil -- they were ingesting oil and toxic chemicals.

So that didn't work. On to Plan B: BOMBING THE SINKING SHIP WITH NAPALM. The idea was to ignite the oil and burn it off, hopefully before it did much more damage. Which probably would have been awesome, had the navy not missed a quarter of its targets. Or if the oil had actually ignited, which it didn't, even after aviation fuel was dumped on top of it. Then, in a baffling display of shortsighted thinking, frustrated residents began collecting the blobs of oil showing up on the coast and dumping it into a quarry -- that was once a German bomb dump. So now, on account of the bombs, this stinking pit of Texas tea is completely inaccessible to anyone who wants to clean up this mess once and for all.

Via Graeme RobertsonThe BBC recommends this hell-pit for days out. The BBC is hard-core.

#4. Healing Ocean Reefs With Millions of Old Tires

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By the 1970s, the hippies had thoroughly indoctrinated the rest of us into believing that maybe we hadn't done the best job of taking care of the planet. One of the places this was most apparent was the ocean, which also went by the name "Liquid Trash Can" at the time. This led to the destruction of coral reefs, among other problems.

Getty "Ridin' the can" never caught on.

Our clear hatred of our own planet was also obvious at our landfills, where millions of tires were accumulating year in and year out. While most people saw these two ecological disasters as unrelated problems, Broward Artificial Reef Inc. saw a solution so crazy it just might work.

In 1974, Broward County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers teamed up to pair the two most unlikely partners this side of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker: tires and ocean. More specifically, to use the tires to create an artificial reef that would entice new game fish and encourage marine life to attach itself, as it would to a natural coral reef.

The artificial reef part wasn't so crazy; artificial reefs are totally a legitimate thing that reasonable people are successfully using all over the world. Some are made of sunken ships, others are constructed out of outdated subway cars, and most of them are actually doing all right. The difference between those projects and the Osborne Reef, however, was that the other artificial reefs were made of heavy things that tend not to move at the slightest wave. Not so with tires, it turns out.

Getty Who would have thought tires were bad for wildlife?

The tires were anchored to the ocean floor with steel clips and nylon, which you'll recognize as a problem if you remember the concept of rust or the degradability of nylon. Or that there are hurricanes in Florida.

So when normal Florida weather started stirring up trouble, naturally the tires started coming loose from their constraints and walloping natural coral reefs and marine life. And when extraordinary Florida weather started stirring up major trouble, thousands of tires went rogue, showing up off the coast of North Carolina after Hurricane Bonnie.

Getty Like college students at spring break.

Within about five minutes of the dumping of the tires into the ocean, it was clear that Florida had invented a full-on ecological disaster for itself, as if God didn't already hate it enough. They are now in the process of slowly and carefully fishing the 2 million freaking tires out of the ocean. The only bright spot in this self-administered affliction is that the U.S. Army Dive Co. is using the reef as a way to train divers, since, you know, there's a shitload of diving to do.

Via nytimes.com"This is not the underwater carnival Disney told me to expect."

#3. Fighting Rats With Hordes of Opossums

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Frank Sinatra once said about New York City, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. ... If I watch out for the rats, because they'll definitely eat my face off."

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New York. The city that never sleeps ... without banging all the bedbugs out of the mattress first and peeling rats off its scalp.

New York has always had a rat problem, but recently New York City's rats have gotten so bad that they've been seen sashaying through Taco Bells and subway trains like they were the mayor(s) or something. In Washington Heights, 20 percent of the buildings inspected by health officials showed signs of rat infestation. And those were just the ones they could see. So you'd think someone would have come up with an elegant and simple solution by now.

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Not that they haven't tried. Over the years, New York has tried poison, traps, a whole league of professional rat killers and digitally mapping rat populations, but the rat problem persists. In 2005, they even instituted a Rodent Control Academy to educate pest controllers, landlords and restaurant workers about smart rat-avoidance practices. Yet none of these solutions can compare to that one time New Yorkers tried to solve their rodent problem with bigger rodents.

So, what could be worse than a rat epidemic? Try a raging opossum epidemic.

iStockphotoThis one isn't raging; it's just yawning. It's hard to tell the difference.

The idea was as simple as it was stupid: buy some opossums, then release them in the streets of Brooklyn so they would eat/kill/maim all the rats. Easy, right? And of course the opossums would die off themselves after they ate all the rats, because what would be left for them to eat? Taxis? Tourists? No way. Bada-bing bada-boom. Problem solved.

Never mind that opossums have a mouthful of 50 dagger-sharp teeth, or that they're omnivores, meaning they can survive off of any food they find lying around, including the exact same trash that rats live off of. Or that rats are faster than opossums by a factor of a million, so it's not like the marsupials would ever catch them in the first place. Or that rats breed up to five litters a year, and each litter can consist of up to 14 baby rats, so the opossums would never have been able to keep up with the rat-making. Forget all that! What did Brooklynites have to lose?

Photos.comNo, really. They live in Brooklyn. They have nothing to lose.

Peace of mind and living space, apparently. Because not only did the opossums thrive alongside the rats they were supposed to eradicate, at least one brought some rabies with him, just in case his knife teeth weren't horrifying enough. By 2010, Brooklyn gardeners, dogs and teenage girls were all living in terror of their opossum tormentors. And it didn't help that the oversized rodents are really into sightseeing. They were initially released under the Coney Island boardwalk but have been seen in Manhattan and the Bronx as well.

As for the rats the opossums were supposed to kill off, they're doing great, thanks for asking. Budget cuts forced city officials to eliminate dozens of pest-control positions, so cat-size rats are having the time of their lives right now.

iStockphotoWord is they're teaming up against Godzilla, because it's a terrible film.